SUPPORT services for doctors trying to help patients with drug problems in the Blackburn area were 'deficient' at the time when a GP prescribed methadone to a teenager without first seeing him, an inquiry heard yesterday.

Paradoxically, however, this was even more reason why Francis Kwasi Apaloo, 55, should not have "taken short cuts" in giving authority to carers of Jamie Edmonson, 16, at the Preston New Road young offenders home to give him the potentially lethal heroin substitute in March 1997 after only a short phone conversation, it was claimed.

Internationally-known drugs expert Professor John Strang, told the General Medical Council's professional conduct committee it certainly did not excuse the doctor's action in authorising social worker Jacqueline Connelly to use another resident's methadone as a temporary stop-gap until he could issue a prescription the following morning.

Professor Strang, director of the National Addiction Centre in South East London and the author of several publications on drug treatment, was giving evidence at a central London hearing at which Dr Apaloo, a single-handed GP at the Montague Health Centre, in Oakenhurst Road, Blackburn, admits iresponsibly prescribing methadone for Jamie on March 21 1997, although he denies that Jamie was rushed to hospital by ambulance but was pronounced dead an hour after arrival.

The cause of death was given as methadone overdose.

The professor, answering questions by council barrister Rosalind Foster, told the committee there was no doubt that support services for GPs in the Blackburn area dealing with drug addicts and people with drug problems in 1997 "was somewhat deficient."

"Paradoxically, however, in the absence of such services in the locality, it places even more responsibility on the doctor and certainly does not excuse a doctor from cutting corners."

(Proceeding)